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First up, both Nom and Boba are right. Forget about publishing dates, if you read interviews with the folks involved they mention many times that they felt they were taking a big risk with Rogue Squadron - that they just weren't sure about the viability of a story without the big three. I'll also say as a fan I ignored those books for years - I was able to buy up through Solo Command in one shot because they were all out already. So it's interesting to me that the publication date for RS is as early as it is - apparently Bantam was willing to take risks then.

Which leads to point two - and Acky's observation. Is DR less interested in taking risks now. I'm not sure - the Bane novels seem to be doing well enough that I assume it was part of the reasoning behind the Sunrider novel. At the same time, DR seems more consrrvative (as Rogue says) in the post-RotJ era, wanting to make sure fans of the big three are sated. It could be that with more dilution (remember Bantam only had like a twenty-five year time span to work with - so introducing other characters was almost a necessity - DR has thousands of years to work with) they feel the books in a certain era should feature those characters, since books 'out' of that era invariably won't.

But none of this means that DR or some future publisher can't revisit a particular era and tell things from a different point of view (see Invasion). And as usual, I don't know that I 'buy' Sue's comment on viability - it took them 5 tales books to figure that out? I doubt it. But it's a convenient excuse (see also: why are there no more X-wing books).